Taro Suwa Movies

Four very different women search for love and meaning in their lives in the hustle and bustle of downtown Tokyo in this comedy-drama. Satoko (Chizuru Ikewaki) is a bright woman who has somehow ended up working as the front desk clerk at an upscale bordello. While she's bubby and optimistic, Satoko doesn't meet many eligible men at work and she longs for a husband. One of the prostitutes working at the bordello is Akiyo (Yuko Nakamura); while she's still pretty, she's not as young as she once was and has grown jaded, and in her spare time she cultivates her friendship with Kikuchi (Masanobu Ando), who she's secretly loved for years. Toko (Toko Iwase) is an artist living on the other side of Tokyo; she's obsessed with her work and suffers from an eating disorder aggravated by her growing isolation. And Chihiro (Noriko Nakagoshi), who shares a flat with Toko, is an office girl who wants nothing more than to settle down with her boyfriend Nagai (Ryo Kase) and become the ideal housewife, though it becomes increasingly obvious that he's never going to marry her. Strawberry Shortcakes was adapted from a popular manga by Kiriko Nananan; Toko Iwase, who plays the artist Toko in the film, is also a noted manga artist, publishing under the name Kiriko Nananan. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

French director Alain Corneau delves into the painfully irrational world of office politics, which are further complicated by a severe case of culture clash in his 2003 comedy, Stupeur et Tremblements (Fear and Trembling). Based on the similarly titled memoirs of author Amélie Nothomb and her employment experiences with a Japanese mega-corporation, Fear and Trembling begins with Amélie (Sylvie Testud) landing in Tokyo shortly after receiving her college education. The young Belgian chose to return to Japan -- where she spent the first five years of her life before her family relocated back to Europe -- for her first job in an entry-level position with the Yumimoto Corporation. Amélie diligently accomplishes her daily tasks with invention and ambition, but her work ethic proves threatening to her immediate supervisors who single her out as a deviant within the corporation's firmly entrenched power hierarchy. As she is led through a series of humiliations and demotions designed to destroy her individuality, Amélie is forced to submit to an endless stream of unreasonable demands issued by nearly every supervisor with seniority over her. Determined to complete her one-year contract with the company in spite of the vicious power struggles, Amélie wages a kind of culture war from her irreversible position as lowest rung on the power ladder. ~ Ryan Shriver, Rovi

Shinji Aoyama (Two Punks) directed this Japanese cop drama about assistant police inspector Saga (Ryo Ishibashi), who is guarding a religious cult leader when the man is shot and killed. In pursuit of the hitman (Yu-rei Yanagi), Saga is also shot, and he's only half-conscious when his gun is stolen. At the hospital, his wife Rie (Eiko Nagashima) begins planning a divorce. Low on self-esteem, Saga resigns from the force. Saga's stolen gun is later determined to be a weapon used in a murder. Hypnosis sends Saga to terminal leukemia patient Shimano (Kazuma Suzuki), who's taking stolen morphine, and the trail then leads to Shimano's ex-lover Kimiko Endo (Kyoko Tohyama). Shown at the 1997 Turin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi